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FCC

The FCC recently released hundreds of pages of their two-year long review of US media. It amounts to the most substantial overview in decades.

If you have not heard about it, you already understand some of the problems but including a focal point of the report, the increasingly neglected coverage of local news by an ever concentrated cadre of media owners.

The report is quite a tome at 360 pages. Because I'm still absorbing it, myself, in lieu of coverage, I'll refer you to "On The Media" audio reporting of the FCC's analysis, below, and the working group's index page for downloading "The Information Needs of Communities" in MS WOrd, PDF, or text format.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.
...

in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.